Recently added articles from Inroads:
Introducing Inroads 24
Jan 01, 2009; ... FOR POLITICAL JUNKIES - AND, LET'S FACE IT, the Inroads editorial board has its share of political junkies - the fall of 2008 was the best of times. The simultaneous occurrence of elections in Canada and the United States is like a rare alignment of planets. Events strongly suggested the theme ...
Ask a silly question, get a silly answer
Jan 01, 2009; ... North Americans voted this fall. Both American and Canadian elections featured conservative regimes fighting to maintain their hold on office even as the consequences of conservative policies made a mockery of conservative beliefs. Both elections were overshadowed by the rising tsunami ...
Buying trust with trillions
Jan 01, 2009; ... Western governments have pumped trillions of dollars into financial markets in the past few months in an attempt to shore up trust in them. This expense exceeds by many multiples anything ever spent on recovery from an earthquake or hurricane, and is more on the scale of a largish modern war ....
Artists of the world, unite! or, La complainte du phoque en Alaska
Jan 01, 2009; ... On August 27, 2008, Le Devoir published an open letter from Wajdi Mouawad to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Mouawad - a playwright, director, Quebec theatre star and the recently appointed artistic director of the National Arts Centre's French Theatre - told his "colleague": Last week, ...
Monitoring the campaigns
Jan 01, 2009; ... The Inroads listserv began in 1997 as a means to link readers of the journal and others interested in policy discussion. With nearly 130 subscribers, it offers one of the few chances for people of diverse views to grapple with social and political issues in depth. Harper and Palin: Just ...
Canada's inconclusive - but maybe significant - election
Jan 01, 2009; ... I have a long memory for Canadian elections, and as I was watching the results come in on October 14, it was the election of 1965 that kept coming into my mind. Like Stephen Harper, Lester Pearson presided over a minority government, and like Harper he called a snap election to try to gain a ...
For Stéphane Dion, it was over before it started
Jan 01, 2009; ... A few days before the federal election was called, like most political junkies I was anticipating the battle ahead and surprised that the topic wasn't coming up in the morning chats at my rural Ontario general store. I raised the issue, and got blank stares. It wasn't clear people knew an ...
What did the polls tell us?
Jan 01, 2009; ... How voting intentions evolved: A view from Quebec Citizens and pundits not infrequently complain that there are too many polls during election campaigns. But the large volume of polls has many advantages. First, people do not have to rely on a single source of information on the state of ...
A new order of things
Jan 01, 2009; ... The case for pricing carbon There were respectable reasons to vote against the Liberals in the recent federal election. Doing so because of their carbon taxing proposals was not one of them. That many Canadians voted against Stéphane Dion's "Green Shift" and that both Jack Layton and ...
The case for cap-and-trade
Jan 01, 2009; ... There is little doubt, among economists at least, that market mechanisms are required to achieve significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions in a cost-effective way. Exhortations will not suffice, and regulatory measures typically do not recognize the different circumstances of different ...
Canada needs to act on climate change now
Jan 01, 2009; ... An open letter to the leaders of Canada's federal political parties This letter, signed by 255 economists, was released during the federal election campaign. Further details are available at www.econ-environment.ca One of the few issues on which most economists agree is the need ...
Destined for failure?
Jan 01, 2009; ... Assessing Canada's current climate policy For two decades, Canadian governments have set ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but their policies have consistently failed. Like previous governments, today's federal Conservative government promises that its policies are ...
A missed opportunity?
Jan 01, 2009; ... Ideas and the U.S. presidential election of 2008 AS I write in mid-October, an Obama victory is expected but still uncertain; you, dear reader, know the result. By focusing on the U.S. presidential election, we risk looking silly, but we could not ignore it. I have to think back to 1968 ...
Observing the folks next door
Jan 01, 2009; ... Some Canadian reflections Imagine the following scenario. The United States is bogged down in an inconclusive and unpopular war. The Republicans nominate an aging war hero as their presidential candidate. The Democrats select an eloquent and thoughtful man from Illinois who is loved by ...
The right to vote: Universal or qualified?
Jan 01, 2009; ... Currently, 1.4 million African-American men - 13 per cent of all black men - are disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. This is seven times the rate for all Americans. Even in a state like New York, race and ethnicity have a lot to do with whether a convicted felon gets sent to prison ....
The religious test
Jan 01, 2009; ... In presidential politics, not all religions are created equal From a strictly legal perspective, nothing could be clearer. There is no religious test for public office in the United States. De facto, however, things are a lot murkier, especially when the office in question is the ...
An 18th-century electoral system in 21st-century America
Jan 01, 2009; ... In this election season in the United States, all attention is on the breakdown in what was supposed to be the world's greatest financial system. Something similar can be said about the democratic system in which this election is taking place. As dramatized in Florida in 2000, this ...
Voting from abroad
Jan 01, 2009; ... During -0 the U.S. election campaign, many non-Americans said they wished that they could cast a vote. In the words of one Montrealer, "We should have a chance to vote since the outcome will affect my life as well." A large number of people outside the United States did, in fact, have that ...
The evolving landscape of American Christianity
Jan 01, 2009; ... When -0 Barack Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004, his Republican opponent was Alan Keyes. Both candidates were committed Christians, but they interpreted their faith in very different ways. Obama thinks that Democrats' reluctance to speak of ethics and religion has been a ...
Quebec's surprising economic performance
Jan 01, 2009; ... The myth of a lagging Quebec doesn't stand up to the facts There's a general impression that Quebec is dragging down the Canadian economy and is propped up by taxpayers in English Canada. This impression is based on a number of statistical measures: rate of growth of the Gross Domestic ...